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Please understand, I'm not saying we should all train like Anderson Silva. I'm not even slightly interested in that level of effort. My purpose in holding him up, is to say, "This is what it looks like when someone has a clear, yet indefinable advantage." Something that's more than inferred by the IP crowd, yet there's no outward indication of it being true.

Anderson was bound to lose at some point, btw. He just didn't take this fight seriously enough, but we know he'll bring out his A game in December.

Just waits til Hendricks puts one on GSP...

You point is exactly the reason why the it has to be felt line is important. When I bounced, I was often aggravated by patrons because I was smaller than the other bouncers. Why? Because my size was a more obvious indicator of competitive advantage.

I am not discounting the obvious indicators of competitive advantage, like size... or tattoos... But we shouldn't we also look at the not-obvious indicators, too? I think this is one of the tasks that IP proponents are still trying to market. I mean, imagine how difficult it is to reach a market that requires hands-on experience to sell what you are doing?

This whole business of challenging the effectiveness of IP/IS skills is pretty funny, considering they're attached to someone who can dominate any room he walks into--and has had to do so. But I guess unless he's #1 on the cage circuit, it doesn't count.

I have to say tho, the more I look at that Silva video the more apparent it is to me that that has nothing to do with what I want from martial arts or who I want to be.

If you allowed punching and kicking, every person who has ever posted on this website would get totally embarrassed. Yes. Dan Harden included.

Well, to be fair, Dan is twenty years older and Anderson keeps in fighting shape for a living. But anyway, this is one of those comparisons that would have been silly even if you had met either of them.

Not that I find your statement outrageous or even out of the norm, but will you please elaborate?

You tend to become what you train for. Cage fighting is cage fighting, and cage fighters are cage fighters.

Not sure what to make of the "cult" remark. I believe the accepted term is "sycophant."

It was maybe two years back that I remarked to our teacher how lucky it was that these IP skills were being introduced by someone who could back them up, because it gave them a lot of credibility. But it's in some ways beside the point--the skills are the skills, whoever has them.

If you allowed punching and kicking, every person who has ever posted on this website would get totally embarrassed. Yes. Dan Harden included.

Anderson has tapped into something that is beyond the realms of "IP/IT/IS" as discussed on these forums.

Michael,

As has been previously mentioned, IP/IT/IS, as discussed on these forums, is a separate aspect of martial training than fighting. One does not mean beans regarding the other.

That said, Dan's forte with IP is not aikido, it's MMA. I suspect if they met, it would be an awesome exchange of dialogue, ideas and tactics, and both would learn from the experience. Maybe we'd end up spotting Dan and Steven playing Rock Scissors Paper in Anderson's corner during bouts.

Like I mentioned before, I and others have seen Dan send a trained MMAist literally flying via spiraling within the guy's mount. Granted, that was a friendly demo, but it was clear to the guy who went airborne, and the other MMAists present, that this is not something taught in MMA circles.

I guess I get annoyed when people talk about IP enthusiasts like we've never rolled or put on the gloves and banged or gone rounds in an MMA context. As much as the people that talk about internal strength like it doesn't require some martial "container" to be applied against skilled practitioners. But there's a number of us with credible experience in sport combatives that are diving into internal strength studies. It's a conversation non-starter at this point.

I agree with Hugh here in several areas. Back in the mid 70's I took some ukemi from Tohei Sensei, went through the ki exercises presented at the time and can see that the 4 principles that he talked could be connected with the solo exercises from Dan that are being worked by many of us now could be aligned with the 4. The problem then was there was no explanation, at least with the folks who I can in contact with.

That's usually the crux of the issue with Tohei Sensei's methods, I remember the problem well, my teachers kept telling me to 'keep one point' and I kept saying 'how?' The truth is the four principles are not the whole story so much as a condensation of what you need to do and an aid. He also has principles for doing aikido. Tohei Sensei's 4 & 5 principles are these:

4 Principles for unifying mind and body

Keep One Point

Relax Completely

Keep weight Underside

Extend Ki

5 principles for doing aikido

Ki is Extending (Extend Ki)

Know your opponent's mind

Respect your opponent's Ki

Put yourself in the opponent's place

Perform (Lead) with confidence

If I translate (based on my best understanding of course) into IP/aiki speak the four principles, they become

Keep One Point - initiate/coordinate from dantien/silk reeling

Relax Completely - do not oppose force, allow it to be redirected through your body, shoulders are a big issue here

Keep weight Underside - use elbow power (that one is a bit vague, sorry)

Extend Ki - manifest 6 directions

Further, there are three basic levels of ki tests, level one involves having basic physical coordination, you might draw a parallel here to kokyu-ho which are some of the methods you use to develop this basic level of coordination for such a ki test. The second level is to have a relaxed mind, which is to say if the tester applies a hesitation before touching you, you should not flinch or move, because you should not be anticipating the test. The third level is to not allow the testers ki to enter your body (bit of a misnomer if you ask me), it's fair to say that this level is where you are into redirecting force within yourself. An example might be if a tester pushes on an extended arm via your hand you should not allow that force to be transferred into your shoulders but into the floor. You have to have a relaxed elbow to do this, in other words, you must use peng-jin. In Tohei Sensei's system you must have passed tests on all three of these levels to get shoden in ki development, there are several ranks above and beyond this which should tell you something, obviously there's more to get on to but the details of that are not so clearly formulated as the first three levels of development.

Practising Tohei's methods has a tendency to leave bits of you stiff that shouldn't be, so you can develop terrific static power doing it, people can push on you pretty hard and nothing will happen. But it tends to encourage you to shut down movement because the teaching structure involves half and half ki and aikido. So you spend an hour or so learning how not to be moved, then another hour applying that to movement and waza and what you get is stiffness for want of a better word. I see lots of people brought up in this school (including me) who don't move their feet enough.
Also there is a tendency I've observed, to use this power to try to physically overcome an opponent, its quite common to see people brought up this way use peng-jin type stuff to more or less just drive over a partner like a tank. Being completely insensitive to what their partner is doing and only interested in flattening them. This is, IMO, technically not what Tohei Sensei was after, just an unfortunate side effect of the pedagogy used. Which of course means that pedagogy needs to be changed.

Mike

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
-Martin Luther King Jr

I've come to see that not being moved isn't the point; it's a byproduct of learning how to manipulate the forces trying to enter my body and adversely effect my mind/body coordination. Practicing the exercises allows me to experiment with dissipating the force, letting it in and sending it back to uke amplified or stopping it at the point of contact.

Ya. One of the things Howard Popkin likes to do is that once you're pushing on him and getting nowhere, he starts doing a little jig with his feet--and you still get nowhere. Point being that you can't move him, but he's still totally free to move however he likes.

I've come to see that not being moved isn't the point; it's a byproduct of learning how to manipulate the forces trying to enter my body and adversely effect my mind/body coordination. Practicing the exercises allows me to experiment with dissipating the force, letting it in and sending it back to uke amplified or stopping it at the point of contact.

Ron

Which is exactly the problem, being immovable isn't the point, but the structure of the classes in the Ki Society and offshoots encourages the assumption that being immovable is what you are learning to do (it's not, but the assumption is the problem). When people test me I'm quite capable of moving my feet, wiggling my hips, even jumping up and down without them being able to 'move me', all I've found that means is that people think they need to be 'immovable' like me when I try to teach them how. They're immediately working from a false assumption, and therefore setting themselves the wrong criteria for success.

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
-Martin Luther King Jr

Which is exactly the problem, being immovable isn't the point, but the structure of the classes in the Ki Society and offshoots encourages the assumption that being immovable is what you are learning to do (it's not, but the assumption is the problem). When people test me I'm quite capable of moving my feet, wiggling my hips, even jumping up and down without them being able to 'move me', all I've found that means is that people think they need to be 'immovable' like me when I try to teach them how. They're immediately working from a false assumption, and therefore setting themselves the wrong criteria for success.

When teaching Ki development, I stress that what we're practicing trains our ability to achieve a specific state of mind/body coordination that is recognized internally via the feelings engendered and expressed externally via demonstrable effects in response to tests. I want students to realize it's the process that drives the end-state. Too many students concentrate on the expected (in their own minds) outcome and miss that actual learning how to get there.